Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which features GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is 67% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 42432 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be just a bit (about 17%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3624 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11376 (114%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.